Melissa Masatani

Weeklies reporter

Recent articles

Accidents

PASADENA >> A 70-foot-tall tree fell near a children’s museum in Pasadena on Tuesday, injuring eight children — two of them critically, authorities said.Klee Scott was with her children at the Kidspace Children’s Museum when she heard the 75-year-old pine tree fall.“As I was approaching the tree, they (children) were being pulled out from under it,” Scott said, describing the rescue of the two children — a boy and a girl —...

Business

When employees walk through the halls of Cardinal Laboratories Inc.’s distribution center, pet products are on display next to posters of nature, captioned “Think Green.”While manufacturing pet food and care products might be the company’s day-to-day work, the Azusa-based company’s mission is “to be planet friendly while providing eco-friendly pet products that improve life for people and their pets.”So it’s no wonder the...

Executive branch

LOS ANGELES >> Celeste Page woke up Friday morning expecting to spend the day with her daughter Jocelyn. Little did she know her plans would include watching the presidential motorcade from her Highland Park porch.“On a scale of 1 to 100, it’s a 200,” Page said of her morning. “It’s pretty awesome. It’s something that doesn’t happen, ever.”While she knew President Barack Obama would be in Los Angeles on Thursday and...

Drug-related crime

Two men arrested at what authorities called a Santa Fe Springs “stash pad” for an international drug-trafficking cartel claimed innocence at their arraignment in a Los Angeles courtroom on Friday.Eddie Perez, 41, and Jose Garcia Samano, 39, are among five people arrested Tuesday and Wednesday as part of a multiagency task force seizure of 700...

Drug trafficking

SANTA FE SPRINGS >> Five people were arrested and nearly 700 pounds of cocaine seized in what officials on Thursday called the largest cocaine bust in the state in recent memory, spanning from the Inland Empire to Los Angeles County. Officials seized 50 kilograms (110 pounds) of cocaine during a traffic stop in Victorville on Tuesday evening, which led them to a house in the 11400 block of Charlesworth Road in Santa Fe Springs. That’s where investigators seized 256 kilos...

Oddities

A video posted on Twitter by Olympic gold medalist and Azusa Pacific University graduate Bryan Clay has gone viral as he pulls out his 5-year-old’s daughter’s tooth — with a javelin.The Clay family, who live in Glendora, went to the track at Azusa Pacific on Tuesday to mark the rite of passage for youngest daughter, Ellie.“She’s...

Celebrities

PHILADELPHIA >> It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and for a group of current and former Azusa Pacific University students, an unforgettable memory: a selfie with Rocky himself.APU seniors Jacob Kerstan and Andrew Wright were in Pennsylvania visiting their former roommate and APU alumnus Peter Rowe over the Martin Luther King Jr. Day long weekend, when they decided to spend their Saturday in Philadelphia, Kerstan said.The group had just finished racing up the...

Wildfires

When the Colby Fire started burning up the hillsides above Azusa and Glendora, the main priority for the first responders was the residents’ safety. It wasn’t until the days and weeks after that each agency and city started tallying up the costs of fighting the fire and protecting the homes in the foothills from the rainstorms that would trigger several debris and mudflows through the communities.More than $7 million was spent in fighting the Colby Fire, according to the...

Wildfires

While most foothill residents were taking a breath Thursday afternoon as the Colby Fire’s spread slowed to a crawl, Glendora city officials stayed busy, working the phones and calling neighboring cities for advice on what to do after a wildfire.“The best way to prepare,” Glendora City Manager Chris Jeffers said, “and probably to understand what you face if you should have a wildland fire, is to look at what other cities have done and learn from their...